For the first time in Russia sounded the best opera Haydn

Recently, the GAKOR team (State Chamber Academic Orchestra, art director Philip Chizhevsky) focuses on ancient music and its authentic performance - hence the interesting composition of the orchestra (this time with the participation of Hammerklavir) with a bizarre sound for the listener of the XXI century. In the year of its 70th anniversary, it presents to the public rare beauty compositions, reviving the names and works of half-forgotten composers, bright foreign masters are invited to perform.

For the premiere of “Armida” by Josef Haydn, the Hungarian conductor György Vashhegyi came to the capital. The maestro comes from the places where the composer once lived and worked (in Haydn’s time there was a single state of Austria-Hungary, the composer served for more than a decade with Prince Esterhazy, whose castle was located in Hungary), perhaps this determined the fate of the conductor, who has been popularizing the opera heritage of the famous Austrian for more than 20 years.

In general, it is interesting here, first of all, that on the stage of domestic musical theaters Haydn’s opera is a rare phenomenon, which cannot be said about his oratorios, for example, and even more so about symphonies, of which there are as many as 104 in the composer’s creative biography. It is also surprising that Haydn himself considered Armidou his best opera, and during his lifetime the composition enjoyed terrible popularity among the public. Only Esterhazy played it 54 times, and how many times it was played in present-day Bratislava (then in Presburg, the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary), in Vienna and even in Turin. And then Haydn's story about the sorceress was somehow forgotten. In Europe, Armida was remembered only in 1978, when conductor Antal Dorati recorded Armida with the famous Jesse Norman, and Armida came to Russia only now.

The image of the sorceress, loved by many composers, including Monteverdi, Lully, Handel, Rossini and others, on the capital stage embodied Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, in the arsenal of which, by the way, this is not the first “Armida”. The concert performance of the opera implies the absence of scenery, costumes and special effects, but we must not forget that Haydn is the author of stunning oratorios, including “Creation of the World” and “Seasons”, whose beauty and detail are breathtaking. The composer was a master of this genre and knew how to capture the attention of the listener.

Speaking of the composer's techniques. In those days, the opera seria (genre of serious opera) was popular, where arias and recitatives alternated as in a concert. The composer, departing from this tradition, freely disposes of musical material, saturates it with colorful and dramatic ensemble numbers with smooth transitions into each other, and solo numbers enrich with details that obey only virtuoso performers.

The opera, of course, you want to see in the stage incarnation on the theater stage and get acquainted with it again, but the composer’s lace music will captivate without scenography, and the voices of the magnificent soloists will finish the listener’s imagination with everything you need, however, all attention is absorbed by the passions that occur between lovers and passionate heroes who came out of Torquato Tasso’s textbook poem “Liberated Jerusalem”. In addition, the old story, which is often served with the notes of tragedy, Haydn turns out to be classicistically optimistic.